A small world-based energy-efficient mechanism in wireless ad hoc networks

By utilizing the multi-channel technology and small world properties, the average path length of a wireless network can be reduced drastically, leading to a significant improvement of network performance. By upgrading a fraction of nodes into the high-level nodes with multi interfaces and higher transmission powers, small world effect can be introduced owing to the short-cuts created by the high-level nodes. This work, in particular, investigates the relationship between the network parameters and the equivalent rewiring probability in wireless networks. Based on an analytical model, small world energy-efficient mechanism (SWEE) is proposed. Focusing on the additional energy cost consumed by shortcuts and high-level nodes, the main idea of SWEE is to create small world effect with as few shortcuts as possible by allowing a fraction of the potential high-level nodes to degrade themselves into regular nodes. Simulation results show that, compared with the distributed channel allocation mechanism without small-world effect, SWEE can reduce end-to-end delay and energy cost by 40% and 25% respectively.